This article appears in Historical Dictionary of the British Empire.
At times called the "Magna Carta of the Coloured people," this law in 1828 gave "Hottentots and other free persons of colour" the same rights as whites in the Cape Colony. When the Dutch settled at the Cape in 1652, the indigenous people they found in the area were Khoikhoi (previously called Hottentots). In law, these people were free. Slaves were imported from Dutch areas in Ceylon and Batavia or from African areas farther north. Over time, many Khoikhoi lost their cattle and economic independence and became laborers for whites. Over time too, a growing group of people of mixed parentage (whites, Khoikhoi and slaves) was created and were joined by freed slaves. Growing white prejudice and the desire to restrict privileges meant that in practice, their freedom and their rights were increasingly circumscribed.
By the end of the 18th century, most people of 'colour' living any distance from weak government control in Cape Town were little better than slaves. White settlers in the interior, who could not afford slaves, had devised a number of techniques to secure cheap labor supplies. Anyone not working for a white could be apprehended as a 'vagrant' and sentenced to work for the arresting white. White employers gave goods to their employees (often tobacco or liquor) and at the end of a contract, the employee was in debt and had to contract another term. This debt bondage could go on indefinitely. Children born on a white farm could be 'apprenticed' to that employer until the age of 25 years as compensation for the burden of supporting it as an infant. This tied the parents also who would normally be unwilling to leave without their children. Thus, these people in practice had no freedom of movement, no right to own land, little recognition in law and no equality in courts.
Simultaneously with the British occupation of the Cape in the 1790s, missionaries, fresh from a Britain already in the throes of the antislavery movement, arrived to begin work with these very people. For the next several decades, they led the fight to alleviate discrimination and exploitation. generally, the British colonial officials wanted to avoid trouble from the white settlers and were reluctant to take action. Thus, frequently, missionaries had to appeal to antislavery and philanthropic groups in Britain to put pressure on the British government. A circuit court introduced in 1812 brought justice to remote areas and granted equality before the law. With missionary help in 1815, many of these 'Coloured People' brought charges against white employers in what came to be known as the 'Black Circuit'. Gradually, a number of ordinances (1809, 1812, 1819 and 1823) attempted to regulate conditions and terms of labor by requiring written contracts and by prohibiting some of the worst abuses. But these regulated without abolishing the 'anti-vagrancy', 'apprenticeship' and similar practices.
However, missionaries still complained about abuses and the inequality suffered by the 'Coloured People'. Led by Dr. John Philip, superintendent of the London Missionary Society at the Cape, the missionaries collected evidence of abuses and the effects of inequality and supplied these to their allies in Britain. Ordinance 50 was the result. It stated that henceforward, "Hottentots and other free persons of colour" were to be subject to no laws to which whites were not also subject, including the 'vagrancy' practices and pass requirements. Freedom to move and freedom to own land were explicitly decreed. It therefore forbade any racially discriminatory legislation and decreed equality before the law. When slavery was abolished in the Empire in the 1830s, the ex-slaves were also brought under this umbrella. This law, which could not be repealed without permission of the imperial government in London, became the foundation of the Cape 'liberal' or nonracial tradition. Laws were framed without reference to race and when a parliament was established in 1852, the franchise was a nonracial one based upon property and income, not on race. As annexations brought large numbers of Xhosa and other Africans into the Cape Colony, they too acquired these political and legal rights. In South Africa, this nonracial policy was unique to the Cape Colony. (References: W. M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton, 1963; J. S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, 1937).